Virtual Fashion Shows,
The next round of fashion shows will be virtual fashion shows. This is not in doubt.
The British Fashion Council announced at the end of April that it would be combining its men’s and women’s shows during what used to be London Fashion Week: Men’s in June. It also plans to roll out an entirely digital “cultural fashion week platform” for designers to use as they see fit. Shanghai and Moscow went digital for their fashion weeks in late March and April.
Ermenegildo Zegna, the Italian men’s wear powerhouse, is forgoing ye olde schedule entirely and doing its own digital thing in July, for which it has a whole new word: “phygital” (that’s physical space and digital technologies).
What does it mean? On Friday, an answer of sorts was provided.
The occasion was Fashion Unites, a YouTube-streamed edition of CR Runway, the special fashion show run by Carine Roitfeld, the former French Vogue editor, and Tom Ford muse, and her son, Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, the president and chief executive of CR Fashion Book Ltd., to raise money for the amfAR Fund to Fight Covid-19. Billed as “the first of its kind” by its host, Derek Blasberg, the head of fashion and beauty for YouTube, it was hailed as “a high-fashion runway show entirely from home.”
